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I got a scholarship to a private school. One with fresh paint, uniforms, and kids who showed up in shiny cars.
The day before I transferred, I heard my mom in the office yelling at him. I never heard him yell, but she sure did. After she was done, she stormed out of the office, cigarette smoke trailing behind her, acting like I wasn’t there at all. It didn’t bother me. She always acted like that.
“Listen to me, Jessica,” my teacher said when he walked out of the office and knelt in front of me. “It’s going to be hard. You’re going to have to do it on your own. But don’t give up. You’re too good for this place.”
I didn’t know what he meant.
But I learned when I had to walk two blocks to the bus stop and then ride it to another bus stop where I could get on one that would take me to my fancy school. When I learned how to wash my uniform at the laundromat a couple blocks from home weekly because we didn’t have facilities at home. I got a job my freshman year of high school and worked after school every day and on the weekends, using my breaks to study, and then I would pray I’d make it home before dark so I didn’t get robbed.
I learned to hide my money at a place that wasn’t home because if I didn’t, my mother or her boyfriends would steal it.
It was hard. It would have been easier to just go back to my normal school. To fall in with the crowd that lived on my block and not have to work and study every minute of every day. I did almost give up. But I didn’t because of Ben.
My fork dropped onto my plate, metal clattering against porcelain. I swallowed the lump in my throat as memories pressed into the backs of my eyes, making everything around me hazy.
“Jess?”
I glanced up, trying to shake off the hold the old memories suddenly held over my mind. “I remember middle school.”
His green and brown irises flared with recognition.
He leaned closer, his presence so comforting that I leaned in too. “You remember?”
“You said we met in middle school.”
He nodded. “We did.”
A rush of happiness came over me. Alongside it was relief. I hadn’t wanted to admit it before, but I was terribly afraid my memory wasn’t going to come back at all. That perhaps I’d been abandoned as a young adult with only the memories of a young child. But as I noted the differences of how I was raised versus where I sat now, the thoughts—the memories—came as if they’d been there all along.
“What else do you remember?”
Something in his voice, the tone or perhaps even an emotion, underscored that simple question with deeper meaning and brought my head up. What could only be described as apprehension passed behind his eyes, almost akin to wariness.
Is he afraid of what I might remember?
No. It was impossible. What could Ben possibly be worried about? He was perfect. The one thing in this entire situation that my heart never seemed to doubt. But the look he was wearing…
“Ben? What’s wrong? Why do you look so worried?”
Crash!
The unexpected and abrupt noise boomed over the entire restaurant, overtaking the atmosphere and filling it with a loud sort of explosion, which was followed by the ear-piercing sound of distorting metal.
My body registered fear before the sound even waned, and on instinct, I dove at Ben, the cast on the lower half of my left leg acting like a cement block trying to hold me in place.
I pitched forward, a strangled sound making my throat feel raw as I grappled for him. Of course, he was more graceful than me, reaching into my chaotic tumble to keep me from falling right onto the floor.
The second his arms closed around me, I clung to him, scrambling to get even closer. Grunting, he hauled me into his lap, my heavy leg having no choice but to follow. A high-pitched alarm cut through the room, and my heart tripled in speed.
Cringing into him, I locked my arms around his neck even as I buried my face into his chest, plastering close and squeezing my eyes shut.
Remnants of the nightmare I’d had last night flashed behind my eyelids like some bad replay. I whimpered, shifting in his lap again, straddling him so I could press all of me against all of him.
“You’re okay.” His voice was soothing compared to the wailing alarm and the dream that flickered so quickly I couldn’t make out what was happening but felt all too well the sick fear it inspired. “I got you, baby girl. You’re okay.”
I felt myself trembling, heard other voices around us, but I couldn’t hear past the roaring of the blood in my veins and the pounding of my heart.
Ben stood, taking me with him, arms locked beneath my ass, and adjusting me so my legs were wound around his waist.
